Ad Infinitum
by LeighEm
Summary: In a world that is corrupt by evil, they tell of the withstanding bond between the reincarnation of the Princess of Destiny and the Spirit of the Hero that will save them. Yet courage is an attribute unheard of and the royal bloodline died out centuries ago. How many rebirths would it take for the line between virtue and sin to blur? To betray the one you love? AU Zelink.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N** : _A new project = too much excitement on my end. I wanted to hold out until I had a bit more of this written but I was just so eager to get the ball rolling that I had to upload the first chapter. As a result, it's a bit shorter than usual as it's essentially a preface. Please do let me know if there's something that you catch or needs to be revised._

 _A few points I'd like to address before begininng: This story is rated a strong T, mostly for violence and occasional accounts for swearing. Yes, this is a Zelink story, you just have to bear with me here despite what initial qualms you may have. The story line is also of my original creation and is not based off of the ending of any of the games, although many will be mentioned._

 _Without further adieu!_

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 _Ad Infinitum_

ˌad infəˈnīdəm/ Latin

adverb

again and again in the same way; to infinity; forever.

Chapter One

In all of the lifetimes that we had spent together, I will never forget the last one. Forever embedded into my memory like the plague of a nightmare that keeps you from the comforts of sleep, forcing you to relive each moment, over and over again.

Yes.

How I remember it all so very clearly. From the look upon your face to the final time I closed my eyes. It was the night that Hyrule fell.

It was the night you killed me.

It had been dark and raining. Every so often lightening would streak across the sky, writhing and crackling with the pain of its existence. It would illuminate the black puddles of water that siphoned through the stoned roads, its light glancing off of the wetness that trickled down the sides of dilapidated buildings that had once been homes. Rubble lay in masses of indistinguishable material. As to what had once been human, I was uncertain.

This hadn't been the first time that Hyrule had become collateral in the great battle between good and evil, yet I had never seen our home in such a horrific state. Never had it been so utterly destroyed and annihilated beyond recognition. Our kingdom, our precious kingdom, had become a grotesque graveyard. Where the market had stood, once filled with the bustling activity of townsfolk, was now a heap of lifeless bodies. Carelessly thrown on top of one another until they piled higher than my head, like a platter at a banquet ready to be served. The tall watch tower that stood near the east side of Castletown, the one where you could see everyone and everything within leagues around, where you would take me to watch the sun rise before the guards knew of my disappearance, now lay broken and crumbled upon the ground. Everything that we had ever known was painted with a red stain and soiled with the rotting corpses of the poor citizens that had lived in it. The citizens we failed to protect.

Wasn't that our duty? To prevent death? To put an end to the suffering and the pain?

I choked back another sob and you pulled on my hand tighter in response as I struggled to make my legs move as fast as yours. The rain threatened my vision and my skirts held promises of sending me sprawling to the ground amongst the blood and the water. So much water. It was all red.

A feeling of unease crept up my neck as I realized that we were the only movement in a deserted war-ground of wreckage. Where were the stalfos? Iron knuckles? Moblins? I fought through them as I had made my way to the castle to meet you but hadn't even been close to eliminating all of them. Everything had been on fire, screams echoing off of decaying homes, explosions sending the ground into a tremulous earthquake. I had watched in horror as babes were ripped from their mother's bosoms, brave men charged forth only to be cut down in showers of blood, and unarmed citizens cowered in shadowed crevices praying to the Goddesses for a blessing that would arrive too late. I tried to save as many of them as I could but it was me against an army and I knew I didn't have time to spare. I would have been killed if I lingered any longer. Now I looked around me to see that the clamor had died with the onslaught of the muffled rain— washing away the screams and the rotting smell of death.

I shivered. I hadn't saved them in time. I failed them.

All of them.

As we sprinted down the motionless alleyways of what had once been Castletown, unbidden memories washed over me like the rain on my face, keeping me awake and from succumbing to an absolute numbness that I knew I would not be able to shake myself from. We took a turn down a crookbacked path and passed through blackened gardens that were nothing but dark ash— the aftermath of wild conflagrations. The rain had turned it into a pasty soot of dirt and grime, I couldn't help but notice how it splattered onto my ankles in flecks of black and red. Red and black.

I blinked once and I saw sun shining down upon us, the blue sky, and felt air that held a comfortable warmth. You pulled on my hand, but it wasn't to prevent me from ending up like the corpses we dodged on the ground, it was because you want to twirl me around in your arms. You pretended that we were at one of those aristocratic balls that we both loathe so much. I was the princess and you were my suitor. Yet you smiled sadly because you knew that no matter how many times we are reborn, you are never my suitor. You are never allowed to be.

You are the unknown hero that never receives the credit you deserve.

I blinked again and the memory faded along with the sun and the warmth and the laughter. Rain distorted my vision once more and I used my free hand to wipe the water from my face. I saw you dragging me along, the crimson on your blue sleeveless jerkin, the grotesque gash that ran through it and the blood that seeped out of it. You wore a burgundy scarf that was wound around your neck, lined with debris, and a deep purple sash around your waist that held an assortment of dirks and knives— weapons I had never known you to use. Your skin was dark. Darker than I had ever seen it before. It's ofttimes fair, yet this time it was the color of sun-kissed sand, bronzed from your time in the desert. But your eyes shone a brilliant blue in contrast— just as they always had. Sometimes your hair is auburn, most the time blonde, once it had been red. Now it was so light that it seemed to glow an ethereal wan blue with each flash of lightening. It hung low to your shoulders as most of it had fallen out of the ponytail you wore at the nape of your neck. Your muscles were more defined, bulked from your arduous lifestyle, and you bore a leever-inked tattoo on your left bicep— the moon and star insignia of the Spirit Temple.

You had been born Gerudo in this lifetime.

You most certainly looked the part. I had rarely ever seen you without a green tunic and your signature matching hood. I was curious to know about your life as a Gerudo and how someone I had known several lifetimes over suddenly seemed so entirely different. But there was no time left for idle reacquainting.

Our meeting in this life had been long coming and it wasn't until the first signs of evil appeared that I first saw you. Dressed in garb that was privy to Gerudo assassins, you stole into Hyrule's golden palace and kidnapped me from my room before I realized what had happened. You see, you had awakened your Triforce before me, regaining all of your memories of our past lives. It had been the first time you'd done so; it was always I who had to seek you out or bide my time until your arrival.

You had tried your hardest to keep me from the final battle this time, you wanted me out of harm's way. Yet once I regained my memories I came after you, I joined you in taking up arms against the reincarnated King of Evil. I remember my shock at seeing the both of you fighting each other. The way you parried his moves with your double scimitars had been so eerily similar to his own fighting style. There was a burning fire in your gaze that I had never noticed before.

For the first time it had not just been the Hero against the Evil King— it had been Gerudo against Gerudo.

A cold numbness brought me out of my head and clouded my mind as if I had been drugged and I squeezed your hand, seeking your comfort to stave it off. My thoughts were lost for the time being and I focused on what still had to be done.

It wasn't over.

We weren't safe.

We suddenly made a sharp left and I saw the familiar citadel appear over brown rooftops that had once been orange. The Temple of Time, rebuilt three times in all the lifetimes I could recount. I let out a deep exhale at the sight of it, nothing had ever felt so much like home in a world that had been turned upside down. Apart from a long crack down side, it seemed untouched compared to the whole of Castletown. For that I was grateful, and it seemed as though you were too because you gripped my hand tighter and raced down the narrowed cobblestone faster than what I could keep up with. I stumbled once but you were there and you made sure I didn't fall before continuing on. I began to feel the dull throb of an ache in my leg resurface, I had used what little energy I had dared to spare to keep the pain at bay with my magic back at the castle. Hissing under my breath I chanced a look down at my leg and through my ravaged cloth of dresses I saw the blood dripping down, mingling with the black dirt. I bit my lip, briefly wondering if we would make it out of this one before telling myself not to entertain such morbid thoughts. Of course we would. We always did.

We had reached the top of the stone steps and you let go when we slowed to a stop at the entrance. I noticed how cold my hand suddenly felt without your fingers intertwining in mine as I watched you throw your weight against the large ironwood doors. A dull creak echoed in time with an earth-shaking thunder and you waited for me to hurry inside before following behind.

I was panting excessively as if I would never taste oxygen again. I remembering thinking that I needed a moment, just a moment to rest, but a glimmer caught my eye and all thoughts on slowing down were lost. Ahead of me was the one thing that we needed to end all of this, the reason why we had narrowly avoided the collapse of Ganondorf's castle and why we traversed through the blood-soaked battlefield that had been Castletown.

The Master Sword.

It glinted with the flashes of pallid light through the tall stained-glass windows. The one constant in the many different lifetimes that we live. I took a subconscious step forward, forgetting the pain in my leg, the fogginess in my head that told me to sleep, and the lack of air in my lungs that caused my throat to burn with each breath.

"Link…" I spoke your name, ready to express the renewed sense of hope I felt at the sight of the sword. I wanted to tell you that we still had a fighting chance now, that perhaps all the lives of the poor civilians we saw lining the streets had not been all for naught. But your name died on my lips as I heard the dull echo of the door closing and I turned around to face you.

Your eyes were shadowed by the alter of the doorway and I couldn't see your face as you stood there in the darkness. I remember the way my heart had begun to beat in my ears instead of my chest or the chill that shot down my spine at the sight of you.

"Link?" I spoke your name again, exuding the anxiety I felt in wasting such precious time.

You stepped forward then and the shadows that were marring your eyes lifted, only to show an expression I had never seen you wear before. It was cold, calculating, and void of emotion. Your foreign garb suddenly struck something inside of me that resembled unease and it left me without valor. I no longer trusted myself to speak.

Your eyes, the one attribute that had been a sense of familiarity to me, narrowed and suddenly the shadows had reappeared.

You raised a hand in gesture to someone or something behind me but I didn't have time to validate with my own eyes before I suddenly felt a searing burn blossom from the back of my left shoulder blade. I cried out and my knees buckled, sending me to the unforgiving floor as something else struck my calf. Then another in my side, another in the small of back. Scorching pain spread through my veins and I fell forward, catching myself with my hands and watched as blood began to splatter beneath me in a multitude of splotches like paint on a white canvas. The red liquid was a sharp contrast on the marble and I stared as the puddles grew, momentarily mesmerized as I gasped for breath, attempting to make sense of the situation.

Moblins in the rafters. I could hear their incessant squalling now that their target was rendered immobile. I had been foolish, in my brief moment of relief I had not sensed them. Oh, how I cursed myself.

I ripped my gaze away from the pooling of my blood and sought you out, naively still concerned with your safety— but you were nowhere to be found. I coughed once, twice, my body convulsing with the pain of the arrow shafts embedded into my skin. It felt as though I was on that floor for hours but in retrospect it was most likely only seconds before I wearily pushed myself back to my knees. Crimson dripped faster and I let out another cry as it felt like my wounds were being torn anew like the claws of a wolfos on my back.

I managed to croak out your name before I succumbed to another coughing fit. I remember seeing the blood on my palm and wondering if that truly came from within my mouth. Then it became very silent.

Why had the moblins not finished me off? Why were they not engaging you?

These questions hadn't crossed my mind in my delirious state of pain. You see, I had several lifetimes, some that I remember, some that I do not, of forming an unbreakable bond with you. One that is only created when you save someone from certain death. When you risk your life for another. When you fight side by side in the name of your kingdom. When you live together, when you die together, when you experience loss and triumph, pain and love as one.

You were my hero and I was your princess.

It didn't matter if you were a Kokiri boy, Hylian, or even Gerudo. Whether you had brown hair or blonde. Dark skin or light. A freckle underneath your eye or a scar down your face. You were always Link.

Link, the hero that would rise up against the evil when everyone else could not.

Link, the hero I could always count on.

I felt you grab my shoulder, tenderly, and I nearly crumbled into your touch, craving your promised solicitude. You were here now. I was safe.

"Link… there's moblins…" I managed before taking another sharp intake of breath. I shuddered as another fit wracked my body and I sought out your eyes but they were shadowed beneath your bangs.

"I know."

Your voice, it sounded distant. It sounded composed.

As if you intended for this to happen all along.

With mounting disbelief, I tried to pull back but you anticipated it and held on with a firmer grip, keeping me in place against you.

"It's time to stop fighting, princess."

Your words instilled a fear in me that I had never known before and dread coiled in my stomach like a snake consuming its prey. Gooseflesh pimpled on my arms and I suddenly felt cold, as if I'd never be warm again.

I now know what that keen feeling had been. In all my years of living life over and over, I had never experienced it to such an extent. An extent where I felt as though every thought that crossed my mind, every word that I spoke, every emotion that I felt, had all been a lie. Our bond that took hundreds of years to perfect, the pain and the loss and the love— lay in shattered in pieces upon the ground, mingling with the splatters of my blood.

But even as I lay collapsed there, supported by your arms, arrow fletchings protruding from my back, my lifesblood draining down my legs, I still believed that you would save me.

Link, the hero that would protect me.

I felt myself involuntarily jerk forward before I felt the pain. Before I felt the blood run down my stomach and bubble in my throat, hot and metallic.

I watched as you withdrew your Gerudo-crafted dirk from my abdomen, soaked in red. Dripping.

"I can't have you interfering any longer," you told me and I forced my eyes to meet your own derisive gaze. Such contempt. Where had that been hiding all these years?

You dropped me then and I fell to the ground with a sickening thud like the flop of a wet fish out of water. Blood everywhere. So much of it. I remember watching it pour out of me like a broken dam and wondering of much would I have to lose before there wasn't enough to keep me alive. Somewhere during that time it became difficult to breathe. I hadn't noticed until I realized the loud hollow rattling of air was coming from my throat, dry and painful.

Your boots stepped into my vision and I wearily lifted my gaze to see you flippantly wiping my blood off of your blade onto your blue jerkin as if it was no more than a bit of disgruntling grime.

"Why…?" I breathed hoarsely. The word almost caught in my throat as hot liquid filled my mouth and I choked, spitting onto the floor next to me.

And you, do you remember what you did?

You smiled.

As if I had told a mildly droll joke.

Then slowly, you crouched down so you could level your eyes with my own and said, "Because there is no justice in the world."

You grinned again with an air of complacency, if I dare to say, and continued, "I am forced to relive my life over time and again with _you_ , of all people. Eternally bound to you and to my sword, defending weak-willed peasants that Din-forbid would fight their own battles, waging a war that cannot be won." You gave a sharp twist of your mouth, "And for what? For the good of Hyrule? So a few insignificant lives can be spared? For you— a spoiled princess who also relies on me to come to your every beck and call when you so desire?"

You cocked your head to the side and I watched that dead look in your eyes transform into something that resembled rancor— frightening passionate retribution.

"Tell your Goddesses when you see them on the other side that I'm done. I'm done playing as their puppet, their chosen hero," you sneered. Reflexively, my finger twitched on the ground, it appeared blurry due to my inability to focus and yet I attempted to fix my gaze on it. Anything to not have to continue to look at your dark skin and blue eyes. Eyes that I had loved with each reincarnation.

" _Chosen_ ," You scoffed at the word as if it had been a taste of curdled milk. "You know what I choose?" I felt your hand cradling the side of my face before I saw it. My vision was beginning to dim and with it, the exultant grin upon your face. There wasn't even a thimble of honor left within your little finger.

"I choose to kill you and break the cycle."

Then you let my head fall and my blood splattered onto the side of my cheek.

How could you say those things to me? How could we have fought together against the King of Evil only hours ago?

Had those been your thoughts all along?

For how many lifetimes?

In those last moments as I watched you walk away from me and through the doors of the Temple of Time without the Master Sword in your hand, I made a vow to myself. I knew what I must do. I came to my conclusion all alone in the temple that started it all and would end it all the same.

 _It wasn't supposed to end this way. It wasn't supposed to be like this,_ I had told myself.

I felt an involuntary tear slip down my blood-covered face as I stared up at the girder high above me, blearily watching your moblins retreat, their task completed. I focused the last of my energy on the ire I felt at the sight of them. The lies I had believed, the knowledge that you had been the one that would bring ultimate destruction to our homeland, snuffing out its life and single-handedly ending mine.

Yes. I made a vow that night.

That night that was dark and raining. That night I lay alone on the marbled floor of The Temple of Time, in a pool of my own blood.

I swore that I would awaken my Triforce before you in our next life, and I would hunt you down like the monster that you were and take your life before you could steal one from another innocent.

You would not be the one to break the cycle, it would be I. For the first time, Wisdom would fight alone against Courage and Power. I would take you both out and protect my kingdom of Hyrule.

"Traitor…" I rasped with my final breath. I heard my distorted voice resonate against the great cavernous ceiling and echo back to me as if the words had been spoken by a different person entirely.

"You traitor."

A person that I didn't recognize.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _Yes, this story lives! It's just been a doozey to write. Holy cow, this chapter is nearly 9,000 words. 9,000. I've never written anything of this magnitude before but I do plan to make future chapters just as long, I'm putting my whole heart and soul into this thing. Expect updates to run monthly, more or less. I would also like to point out that I'm not working with a beta so I do self edit and thus tend to miss a few things, so please do let me know if something catches your attention._

 _Another friendly warning : This story does and will contain many mature themes and graphic descriptions of gore and brutality. Sometimes I scare myself with what I can conjure up._

 _That's all! Enjoy!_

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Chapter Two

"…after sealing away the great demon king, the Princess of Destiny sought out her hero only to find his body cold to the touch and his life stolen from his lips. They had won, but at a price. She too, sustained wounds that spoke of impending death. The princess smiled because she knew that even though they would not be alive to see it, they had granted Hyrule a period of peace and would again when the time came for them to take up arms once more. Together, they would continue to be reborn in the centuries to come, blessed with extraordinary courage and wisdom from the three golden goddesses to fight the resurgence of evil wherever it may rise.

"It is spoken that the princess' unyielding love and the hero's unbreakable spirit will surpass life and death to protect those in need until the ends of evil and time."

A crisp breeze moaned through brittle masonry and shadows played their nighttime games on thatched ceilings. The flicker of a flame sent them fleeing only briefly before returning to their dark creviced dwellings. Then all was silent.

"Tell it again, Mama."

"Not now, sweetling, it's time for rest."

A small child lay huddled under a mound of sewn sheepskin and makeshift furs on the dirty floor of a hut just about as small as he. Next to him, was a woman crouched, reading a decayed binding by candlelight, the parchment crumbling under her touch.

"Please, Mama?"

"Tomorrow."

The soft glow fluttered again as the women bent over to brush back greasy brown bangs and planted a kiss on the child's forehead. She frowned softly and pulled back, wiping a dirty smudge from his face with her thumb. Her own skin was worse for wear, but she hadn't a care to give. As long as her boy was clean and healthy then nothing else mattered.

"Mama?"

The voice came soft and quiet just as she wet her fingers to extinguish the taper. She stopped and turned to face her boy.

"Were the Goddess and the hero reborn like the story tells?"

She placed her calloused hand back upon her lap. Hands of a laborer. Dry and cracked, rough around the edges and dirt under the nails.

"Yes, they were, many times. But not everyone believes such."

"Why don't they?"

She sighed. A hollow, worn sound.

"Because not everyone believes the legends of old."

It was quiet for a time. Quiet long enough to hear a yell in the distance, a hoot of a startled owl, and the rustling of leaves long since dead. The woman thought nothing of it. Normally, there was even more commotion at this time of night. She licked her fingers.

"Will they come now?"

Something in his voice made her stop for a second time, it made her heart still and her breath catch in her throat. The high-pitched lilt of a child's virgin innocence.

How often had she asked herself the same question? Each time she closed her eyes at night, praying to survive just another day for the sake of her boy. Each time she stepped outside her hovel of a home only to hear orchestras of steel on steel. Each time she witnessed another one of her friends, her family, dragged away in a fetter of chains.

She had asked too many times to count. Yet somewhere along the line, she had stopped questioning and it didn't even occur to her why she did. Was it because she could no longer believe in a better world? Had every ounce of hope all been lost with each life that she watched end?

The woman flicked her gaze to her child, looking into his glassy amber orbs of wonder, of curiosity, of faith. It was an unconditional trust that he held in her. The kind that despite whatever despair or fear that she may feel, she pretended it didn't exist for the sake of those looking to her for an absolution that she didn't have.

But the goddesses were cruel, that she knew.

And so the woman smiled, a soft quiver of her mouth that made her eyes sag in the corners and told her boy the lies that her parents told her.

"Yes I do believe they will. The hero will ride through Hyrule on his great horse and drive away all the scary men with swords. The princess will appear, her arms full of warm blankets and clothes and delicious food for all the little girls and boys like yourself. You won't ever be hungry or cold or scared again, my sweet."

The child sniffed, pulling the scratchy fabrics up to his chin. His mother leaned over and closed the small distance between them to leave another chaste kiss on his face. She lingered, only for a moment and then the ground beneath gave way to a tremble. It was hardly noticeable at first then steadily grew with a tremulous rhythm that shook the walls with threats of staving in. Streams of dirt rained down from grooves in the roofing and the child whinnied in panic. The woman tossed the book to the side where it landed in a mound of dirt and covered him with her arms, cooing with urgency to keep him quiet.

The flame from the candle had transformed into a fiery tongue and the shadows began to scamper around the hut in a reckless frenzy, preforming a maniacal jig. Letting out another fearful sob, the child watched them dance closer, stretching the length of his body and around his mother's arms. A piece of wood fell from the ceiling and landed in a heap of dust on the ground beside them. The noise seemed to spur the woman into action and she briefly tore herself away from her son to blow out the growing flame. All fell silent with the darkness that enveloped them like an unwanted mask of stale tension.

Soft whimperings cut through the stillness— an airhorn in a tomb, and the mother covered his quivering mouth with a dirty hand. "Hush, sweetling. We must be quiet now, please don't cry," she whispered, her voice an octave higher in rising hysteria. The woman tried to focus her eyes in the newly darkened room and she pinpointed her gaze on thin streams of guttering yellow that slipped in and out of gnarled crevices that made up the surrounding walls. Firelight growing brighter.

That's when they heard it: a stately cadence of footfalls becoming louder and closer with each breath. The child let out another terrified whimper and his mother clamped her fingers around his mouth, a futile gesture. Her eyes frantically scoured the small dwelling, desperate to find what she was looking for. There weren't many options left.

"Listen to me, listen," she fussed fervently, hastily caressing her son's face. His own fearful gaze met hers and she continued, "I need you to get to the wall. Move on, farther back."

The child nodded with a small jerk of his head, eyes wide, and a trembling chin.

"Go on now," she hurried and waited for him to curl into himself in the far corner of the room before throwing the sheepskin in a haphazard heap over his small body. "Do not come out no matter what you hear, alright? No matter what. You keep your eyes closed and tell yourself the story of the princess and the hero."

The footfalls had stopped. It was so quiet that she could hear them now— the echoing screams in the distance. Some were closer than others. There was bellowing and shrieking like the slaughtering of livestock.

She positioned herself against the wall, the thin piece of wood that was dislodged from the ceiling in her hands. She waited, her chest heaving with coiling dread that sat heavy in her gut. More screaming. Something snapped nearby.

The rickety door splintered open with a deafening eruption, pieces of wood scattered in all directions and the woman raised an arm in a meagre attempt to shield her face. A bodily stench permeated the room that smelled of hot onions and stale sweat. When she opened her eyes again there was a tall bronze skinned man with a shock of flaming red hair complete with a dangerous gleam in his eye that spoke of nothing kind. His mouth morphed into a smug grin.

"What do we have here…" the man crooned, taking a step over the threshold.

The woman feebly held the scant of wood in front of her, "You stay away from me! There's nothing you want here! This village is under the protection of the royal watch!"

The man's grin only deepened into a maw of dark shadows and hallowed cheekbones, eyes alight. "What royal watch? I don't see any royals doing any watchin' round these parts."

Something in the tone of his voice made her hair stand on end as if an icy hand had touched her neck. It was then that she came to a realization that made the wood slip in her grasp. She clung to it with a desperation she had never known.

He moved closer, the rancid smell growing thicker and causing her throat to close in a gag. "King's orders. All Hylian villages are ours now and all their pretty lil women," he said as if he'd just been handed a lifetime's worth of rupees. With a sneer, he leaned forward, "an' that includes all the Hylian-lovers too."

A primal sound was ripped from her throat as she flung herself to the side, attempting to evade him but the space was too narrow. He reached out a burly arm and caught her easily around her torso. She screamed as she was flung back against the wall, her head splintering the wood and rendering her dazed. The bronzed man grappled with her arms, pinning them down and striking her across the face until she was down in the dirt. She coughed and spit out brown sludge that had become lodged in her mouth. A warm trickle made its way down the side of her temple accompanied with a painful ache and yet all she could focus on were the boots that stepped into her vision. She felt a hand on the back of her tattered collar, it yanked her onto her knees.

Once there had been a time when she could have fended him off. Once there had been a time when her dark skin and red hair had meant something. The necklace she bore concealed under her tunic weighed heavy on her chest, burning with flames from the past.

 _Not in front of my boy. Please, in the name of the Goddesses, not in front of my boy._ She closed her eyes as the man advanced in front of her, waiting for his violent touches that never came.

A second pair of footsteps crunched on withered straw. A soft whine, barely audible but unmistakable.

Her eyes snapped open, gasping with a sharp intake of breath. "No!"

"You thought you could sneak from me, wench?" The fury was on him and his eyes afire. She reached out to stop the man but another strike to her face sent her reeling towards the ground once more. She ululated a deep moan. Her mouth was moving but she couldn't form the coherent words that she wanted, instead she could only watch as he reached for her boy's tiny wrist, nothing but a brittle stick ready to snap. His shrieks echoed around her, complementing the chorus of chaos.

" _Run_!"

Somehow, she managed to rip the words from her throat and they seared the air in an ear-splitting scream. The man lunged forward and the boy ducked under his grasp with his small frame and scrambled towards his mother who was beginning to pick herself up from the ground.

"Mama!"

"Get out of here! You leave me beh—"

There was a shriek and more pain and all she could see was mud.

"Get that boy! I'm takin' care of this woman."

"Come 'ere you brat!"

"Mama!"

Letting out another groan, she turned her head so that faint light and a second pair of legs wearing shalwar pants filtered into view. Tiny feet scampered out of her line of sight, there was a squeal and more frustrated grunting. Cringing as she did so, the woman fought through the ebbs of pain that only made her want to close her eyes and shouldered herself onto her knees. Both brigands were preoccupied with corning her very frightened son. She desperately fumbled along the ground until her fingers curled around the familiar piece of shrapnel. Unsteadily, she stood on her feet and began to edge closer behind the unsuspecting men.

"Grab him you dim-witted—"

The thunk of wood on the back of his head cut him short and sent him stumbling towards the ground in momentary tremor.

"You stay away from my son!" The woman admonished in a primal adrenaline-induced act of bravery that vanished as soon as his partner rounded on her with a contemptuous look of blood-lust.

His eyes bulged and he reached out a snarled hand, pockmarked with grotesque scars and grime. "You filthy excuse for Gerudo!"

She tried to move, but she just wasn't fast enough, not anymore. He had her by the throat and swung her around until her back slammed into the wooden wall. She clawed fruitlessly at his hand, wheezing with a desperation for breath. That's when her eyes met his, an orange hazel just like her own, yet shaped like his father's. It had been her daughter who inherited his soft azure color.

Her son.

He was all that she had left.

Her heritage be damned. Her amber eyes held no more sway than the price of a green rupee, not like they had once before. Those days were past and burned like her home, her people, and what they had been. There was no such thing as honor, as gallantry, and heroes. The world had become a cynic's haven, roiling with the blood of its conquests. She sold her dignity the moment she lay with her children's father.

And she wouldn't change a thing.

Mustering the last of her energy, she brought her knee up, wedging it into the bandit's thick chest. Unarmored and ill-protected, he dropped her in a moment of a surprise and she scrambled to her child, shoving and pushing him towards the hole in the side of their home.

Home. A poor excuse for one.

She fingered the chain around her neck, tucked under the cloth of her tunic and in one swift motion yanked it off. A golden ring shone hanging in the moonlight and she quickly thrust it into her son's fragile hands, cupping his fingers over it tightly.

"Go, now! Get! You run and don't you dare stop! Don't you come back here, not ever!"

Hands were grabbing her from behind. Hands all over her body, tangling and touching, prodding and striking. Tears fell from her cheeks as she watched her son back away with a final look of reluctance.

"Don't let them find you! Don't let them—"

Her head jilted forward in a sudden explosion of pain and the last thing she thought of before the darkness consumed her was her husband and daughter and how she would never see them again.

 _I am sorry that I couldn't hold out a little longer…_

 _Forgive me._

* * *

The boy stared in horrified awe as the burlier of the two men used a club to bash the back of his mother's head, leaving her limp in their dirty arms. The ring nearly fell from his grasp.

"You shoulda listen'd to yer traitor mum, halfbreed," the other one spoke with an irritated scowl and a look of a dog chasing tail after keatons.

The boy took a wary step backwards and the man advanced, his mouth opening and closing but he couldn't hear a word over the thrumming of his heart. Carefully, one step, two, he turned and fled on his heel just as the smelly man took a long stride forward.

He ran and ran just like his mother told him. He ran past tall flames, higher than any cookfire he'd ever seen, through black rain that tasted of ash, and screaming— a motely of screeches and bellows that spoke of chaos. It was hot and it was wet. He slipped once only to fall to his knees, his hands sleek with black blood from the ground below. Smoke eddied in great plumes that reached for the heavens with their knobby fingers. Perhaps, he thought idly, that's where the screams resided, riding the train of smoke so the goddesses themselves could hear them.

Men with fire for hair were in evidence, they stalked about with hooked iron tools in their grasp and deep throaty laughter that echoed long past as he pushed forward. He saw women that would make talk with his mother on warm afternoon days by the creek side, except now they were on their knees and the fire men were binding their hands, hitting them and kissing them. The boy thought it strange because only husbands kiss their wives. And they most certainly did not hit them.

He chanced a look behind him to see that he had lost the man with the club. The one that had hit his mother. Tears pricked his eyes but he wiped them away because heroes didn't cry. Instead he ran faster, faster than the heat and the smokes and the screams. He passed by wagons with barred cages, in them were children like himself. He would have recognized some if he looked hard enough but he didn't dare linger.

He spotted Tolman the blacksmith who always gave him sweet drops made of honeysuckle over by the granary on his knees in front of a pole. As he ran closer he saw Tolman's hoop tongs sticking out of his neck, nailing him to the flag shaft.

He ran faster, stuffing his mother's necklace into the pockets of his trousers.

Crimson flags rose high above the pandemonium, their tales whipping with the lap of flames, yet they did not burn. On them were golden moons, waned into a crescent, and next to them a single star. He had seen that symbol before; it never spoke of anything good.

Nobody seemed notice the small dirty haired boy who darted through burning settlement, weaving around singed corpses and merciless roars that made his ears ring. Empty sheepfolds and tumbledown barns stood agape without signs of life, only blood and tufts of fur that scurried in the wind. A tree taller than anything he'd ever seen before was cloaked in a bright orange, stark against the black sky, and burned all the way until it reached the grass then caught like a spilled pool of water. The night rang with the sound of steel and crying. Death was all around him.

He had never left the village before and the thought of it frightened him, but staying frightened him ever more. He tore past broken buildings and men with pointed ears dying in their lifesblood, their eyes hollow and open. His heart beat faster than his legs and he was worried that he'd outrun it. Old Ariah once told him about a golden wolf that lived far south in the Forbidden Woods. Its eyes blue as frozen steel and its teeth white as a wraith in the moonlight. He said that the wolf didn't need a heart to live, or eyesight to see. He could run forever like a current of the wind and fight with the strength of a thousand boar for years on end, never tiring. He said that's why those who enter the woods never return, because the wolf would eat them whole before they could. His mother always told him not to listen to Old Ariah's stories, he was hoary and sick. But as he ran through the maze of death and heat, the boy wished that he had the golden wolf by his side to protect him.

Tall palisade came into view through the haze of grey smoke and the boy set his sights on it. Just a league away was the iron gate, agape and beckoning. He had never seen it open before, not even the time the priest's boys dared him to touch it— for which he got twenty lashings when the council found out.

He pushed, propelling his feet to move faster, to leave his heart beating behind. He pretended that his eyes were as blue as steel, teeth as white as a wraith, strong as a thousand boar…

Something had hit him square in the stomach and he gagged as the air was expelled from his lungs in a sudden _woosh._ He nearly flipped over the object until he was grabbed by his collar from behind. He gave a breathless shriek that sounded like a tiny cat and tried to claw his way free only to come up with air. A loud braying sounded in his ears, hot and thick, and his exerted heart was suddenly gripped by fear. He swallowed but instead felt the urge to gag again.

"Where do you find you're filchin' off to, brat?"

Another yell guttered from his throat and he wriggled fruitlessly.

"Got another one!" The beast hollered behind them.

He felt the cloth of his collar shift and he was abruptly swung around until he faced a wooden wagon with bars like the many he had seen before, except this time he was heading towards it. He writhed more violently once he saw his destination and screamed until a blow to the head rendered him limp. He watched listlessly as browned grass passed beneath his suspended body, his bare feet caked with dried black and crimson, a toe nail was missing. He hadn't even noticed the pain of it in his haste.

"In with the rest."

He was tossed again and met with unforgiving solid purchase. He hit the wood and rolled once before he heard the latch of a lock behind him. He didn't bother to open his eyes until he felt the wagon sway and jolt as it began to roll. There was a whinny of a horse and a holler to boot before he blearily blinked through the pain in his throbbing head.

He wasn't alone. Two other boys who looked to be a few years is senior, both dark of hair and eye. A small boy was squeezed in the middle, his hair a shade lighter, his eyes closed in terror. They huddled in the far back of the wagon, their backs pressed against bars of ironwood. The two sat wide-eyed and gaunt, they remained tight-lipped and shrunk into themselves even as he sat up on his haunches. They had long ears too. _Hylians_ , he remembered his mother's words. They weren't the only ones, however. In his peripheral he caught a shock of mussed blonde hair. He sat alone, scrawny just as the rest of them yet he held a different air about him. This boy had narrowed eyes, and he held fisted hands at his sides, staring past him, past the cage. He followed his gaze until his sights landed on the back of the brigand's head who gave another crack of the whip, spurring the horses into a trot.

There was no fear in that boy's eyes. Only anger.

"Kill us. Tha's what they're gunna do."

The boy turned towards the voice. It had been the tallest of the three cowering in the back, presumably the oldest. He didn't recognize him.

"Shut yours, Cadus. You're scaring him."

"It won't matter if he's scared as a whelp or sick as a bitch when they're done with us." His voice was a belt and the smallest visibly flinched then an onslaught of sobs caught in his throat. The third boy wrapped his arms around him, wiping his brow and petting his head.

"Now you done it! Where do you get off scaring my brother like that, huh?"

Cadus shrugged, his eyes still as big as the moon itself. "It won't matter. Nothing matters…" He trailed off, mumbling incoherently.

The boy didn't even have time to respectfully look away before the older brother caught his gaze, his eyes narrowing like the blonde haired youth behind him. He swallowed timidly, uncertain as to why he warranted such a derisive regard. The brother continued to hold the child, never breaking contact, "And what're you supposed to be? Their spawn sent to keep us in check? Make sure we ain't looking to make our leaving? Well as you can see we're not doing anything of the sort so you can sod right off!"

The boy instinctively retreated backwards, his eyes enlarging to the like of Cadus' moons. The younger brother continued to cry. The wagon jilted over a rock and the boy fumbled in his retreat but a hand on his shoulder righted him.

"Now who's the one scaring children? Let him alone, Eldwin. Can't you see he's just like the rest of us?"

It was the angry boy, whose wrath was currently redirected, much to his relief. His voice was deeper than he expected and it cracked on syllables that drawled like "o" or "ah". The older brother seemed surprised at the outburst as if he couldn't believe it was blonde hair who said the words. But his features quickly twisted like bark on a tree. "Now you use that tongue of yours! A whole lot of good it did us back at the pot shop!"

The grip tightened on his shoulder and he stiffened, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the boy's long flaxen hair and thinned mouth, taut with anger. His blue eyes flashed and for a moment he swore they were the color of frozen steel.

 _The golden wolf…_

At second glance, he looked to be older than the rest of them, save for Cadus and his moon eyes.

"Don't you fix that on me! I wouldn't have been able to save all of us and you know it!"

Eldwin retracted, shrinking under the wolf's whiplash chastening. He swallowed, tightening his jaw and flicked his gaze back to the boy who instantly averted his eyes in response.

"Then what about him? You say he's innocent but I don't see no innocence in that eye color of his! And his ears— he's Gerudo!"

The boy braced at the word, a word that had been used against him like the sharp end of a sword since he could remember. Acute and threatening.

His mother had told him to not let that word hurt. It was only a title and it hadn't always been a bad one. "You're a mixture of something sweet," she'd tell him with a kiss to the head. He had never known what she meant but he tried his best to do as she said, pretending that the words and the rocks they threw at him weren't real.

"It's no matter if he's Gerudo or moblin, I'd sooner take my chance with him than the rest of you lot right about now. Back off or I'll give _you_ something to cry about."

The hand released his shoulder and everyone stayed quiet after that except for the small child's soft hiccups and Eldwin's murmurs in his ears. The blonde wolf had retreated back to his solitary corner, his hands no longer fisted but his brow just as screwed up as ever. Deep in thought or simmering with rage, he couldn't tell. Mayhaps a bit of both.

The boy took to the wood bars somewhere along the middle of the cage after that, staying equal distance away from both parties. Every so often, he'd catch queer glances from Eldwin and even his brother once he stopped crying but he pretended he didn't see just like he pretended he couldn't hurt. He wanted to say something to the wolf who stood up for him but after one glance at his long unkempt hair and feral eyes he thought twice and ended up keeping to himself. He didn't want to draw any more attention.

With a sudden wave of pain he glanced down at his feet only to see them still stained with red. Black flakes of dried blood were caked around the tissue that had once been protected by his toenail. He had forgotten about the pain again until the throes washed over him anew. Stifling a soft whimper, he tore a parcel of the dirty rag he wore, which had recently become daubed with black smirch, and gently wrapped it around the toe. His mother would always wash his cuts before wrapping them but water was a scarcity, a thought that made his throat dry and ache with a sudden yearning. He looked up only to meet the eyes of the small child tucked into his brothers arms, his eyes a curious hazel, before he brusquely turned away.

The boy bit his lip, riding out the pain in his foot and pressed his cheek into the grooves of the bars, watching as the village sunk into the hazy nighttime horizon. He had missed their exit amidst the quarreling and now could only make out what they had left behind. Tall flames reached for the dark sky, the smoke an extension of its crimson talons that grabbed even higher, wrestling with pale clouds in the early moonlight. He sniffed back the stinging in his eyes that always appeared when he thought of his mother. As he watched the village dwindle into nothing more than a reddish grey mass he wondered if she knew he wasn't there anymore. She had told him to run, to never come back, but he figured this hadn't been what she intended. He escaped the village— behind thick spindles of a cage.

He wondered if she was alright. If she made it out. Would he ever see her again?

Images of men with red hair, grabbing her, pulling her, like the women on the street flooded his head and he abruptly closed his eyes and willed them away. Instead, he watched as they passed by oak-clad bluffs and rushing runnels drifting parallel to their trail. The wagon jolted and careened in the mounds of the rushes, reaching tall around them in places. As unfavorable as his current situation was, he had never been outside the village before and even in the darkness he had become enthralled. Elk passed through sentinel trees, hidden by their whispering shadows. Keese and owls alike whickered above, he could hear the prattle of their wings beating the air. Things that he had never seen, things that he had only heard in his mother's or Old Ariah's stories were in front of his very eyes. For a while, it kept the sadness and the fear at bay.

Only when stone ramparts appeared in the golden horizon did the feelings resurface, his gut coiling with dread. The boys around him had drifted off to sleep, it had seemed, all save for the golden wolf who had his fists clenched again. He had his sights set on the great castle ahead. Pillars rose taller than any tree or mountain, their dark stones painted with orange morning light. The sun was beginning to break through the dawn and it cast halos through the wall's crenellations like a magical crown. It was huge. Bigger than his small village; he had never seen anything of its like. They passed by other wagons and men on horses, large packs secured to their saddles and crates piled in wheel barrows— a constant flow of people bustling to and fro. Dark of skin and hair in various shades of sunset, from deep crimson to golden tangerine, men and women alike. Their skin taut and lean, well-muscled and shining with an almost oily gleam. Their pants loose fitting and their chests wrapped in white gauze with shawls and tabards in royal purples and scarlets.

 _Gerudo. They're all Gerudo_ , he realized. They looked different than the Gerudo he was used to seeing. Clean. Humane.

Their wagon was being escorted by women in boiled leather and ringmail with polished greaves and pointed boots. Others stood sentinel to the side, evenly spaced and filed with tall weapons clutched within their grasp, their hilts resting in the muddy soil below. Sharp faces were hidden behind helms of gold and silver, encrusted with rubies and other red gems that matched their shoes. He could only make out their piercing amber eyes in the shadows of their visors, following them with stalwart gazes as they passed under an archway, leading into the city.

The contemptuous looks the golden wolf gave each soldier did not pass over him.

 _I should be angry too,_ the boy thought as he watched the women lead them further past the walls— all tan of skin, _they destroyed my village, they killed—_ He stopped himself.

 _No. She's not dead. She can't be._

Yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to muster up the animosity that the wolf so obviously felt. His blue eyes were squinted in subdued ferocity, a flame flickering just behind his eyelids, waiting to be unleashed. Lips pulled back tightly, almost in a snarl. _This wolf is ready to strike given the opportunity_. The boy wondered if he would.

Traders and caravans passed by them without a second glance, bustling about with a plethora of crops and meat, their smells permeated the air. Rancid and sour. The boy's stomach grumbled its dissent but his throat closed in a wave of nausea.

"The castle," a small voice spoke. The other children had awoken. Eldwin hushed his younger brother with the curious eyes.

Everywhere he turned, moons and stars dotted the scene before him. Flying high as morning ravens on blood flags, jingling on plated armor worn by guards and soldiers, carved into doors and wagons, burned onto horses and cattle being led through throngs of early-rising townsfolk, and stamped onto the entrance to the grand castle that lay before them. The manse stretched for leagues in both directions so far that the boy could not see from his limited view behind bars. The tallest point rose higher than the clouds it seemed, he couldn't make out the top through the haze of damp fog that had settled around the town. Dripping wet grey smoke that seemed just as menacing as the fingers that crawled to the heavens after razing his village. He shivered from the cold. Women with more weapons stood ahead, forming another line that barred any entrance to the courtyards. They made a sharp left, the castle and its towers disappearing behind brick buildings.

"Barley, corn cockles, and suet!" A piebald man yelled in a raspy voice, pushing along a cheapened trolley. He walked with a limp and when he turned to catch sight of their wagon he revealed a milky white marble in his eye socket.

A brutal looking woman with frazzled black hair and wild eyes wider than Cadus' moon saucers lunged at the bars the boy was pressed against. He jumped back with a sudden start. "You filthy fiends! I'll wait to see you burn in hell!" her screams molested his mind and he scampered backwards until he hit the opposite side.

Next to him, Eldwin's younger brother was wailing again. Cadus began to mumble to himself as he was wont to do.

More screams echoed around them, filthy words, dirty words. Something wet splattered against the back of his head. He flinched in shock, pulling into himself yet he continued to feel the wetness trickle down his back. Screeches raked his ears like the call of flaying keese.

An old crookback crone skittered back and forth parallel to the wagon, looking everywhere yet nowhere with wringing hands chanting, "It's too late, it's too late, it's too late," until the boy put his hands over his ears to make it all stop.

He closed his eyes and it did. Everything had become nothing more than a muffled murmur and he pretended it was his mother telling him the story of the hero and his princess.

"… _they granted Hyrule a period of peace…"_

A village on fire, burning until nothing was left but the taste of ash in his mouth.

"… _blessed with extraordinary courage and wisdom…"_

Screaming and crying then deafening silence.

"… _to fight the resurgence of evil wherever it may rise…"_

She told him to run but her own words died on her lips.

"… _until the ends of time…"_

Chaos. He couldn't breathe. The fires were ravaging him, encircling him so he couldn't escape. Why couldn't he run? Where was his mother?

Dead.

All dead.

He tried to scream but nothing came out.

He was trapped in the darkness and the murmurs and the fire and the silence. The blood and the moon and the stars.

"I said look at me!"

The boy opened his eyes to find he was staring back into twin blue flames, alight and frenzied. The wolf had pried his hands from his ears and held them tight in his grip, his long golden hair hanging savagely across his dirty face.

"Breathe, just breathe," he urged, his grip loosening.

The boy blinked and he felt the cool wind on his damp cheeks. He had been crying. Doing as the wolf asked, he took a deep breath, allowing it to fill the expanse of his aching lungs and let it out in a decompressing relief.

"Good, now keep looking at me. Don't look out there, not at them."

The boy gave a tepid nod and stared into his wild eyes, imagining himself sitting in Old Ariah's hut next to his hearth as he painted his stories with old words. Stories of forests and swords and heroes that spoke of verdant leaves and sun mottled flowers, hidden groves and ancient temples with whispers of magic hiding in their recesses.

Then the wagon came to a stop and the golden wolf swallowed, his hands letting go of his wrists and backed away to his respective corner as if nothing transpired at all. He heard the braying of horses then footsteps as they rounded alongside the wagon. An older man, dark grey skin wrinkled and cracked, a long red beard long since turned a sickly dead rose color. His teeth let out a whistle when he spoke.

"Out, the lot of yeh. One at a time or I'll have your legs chopped off right to yer buttocks."

And that's just what they did. First was Cadus, his eyes wider than he'd ever seen them in the entire ride. He was shaking so badly that the boy was sure he'd make water right there on his trousers. The bearded man grabbed him roughly once he proved to be too slow for his liking and yanked him down into the dirt and Cadus cried. He bound his hands behind his back with a brown rope then pulled him upright and shoved him into a group of female soldiers who received and ushered him along into a dark tunnel.

Next was Eldwin and his brother who clung to his shirt with a violent desperation. Eldwin whispered something into his ear and pried off his tiny hands. He jumped down and his hands were too tied behind his back. He didn't cry, nor was he pushed down into the dirt. He gave his sobbing brother who had begun to climb down another look before he was pulled away.

After then it was just him and the wolf left. The boy began to crawl the length of the wagon before his arm was seized and yanked backward. His eyes widened as he watched the wolf calmly make his way towards the old man, a certain gleam in his eyes.

 _Given the opportunity, he will strike_ , he recalled again and swallowed with anticipation.

"Now, boy! Get yer arse down here!"

With a growl, the man reached in after him but the wolf was faster and managed to grab hold of his wrinkled arm, giving it a good twist. He let out a deep bellow and it was over in a blink of an eye as he fell limp against the wagon. Immediately, guards rushed forward; the wolf had nowhere to run. They dragged him out but unlike Cadus, he struggled and writhed like a chained animal until they hit him over the head and he went limp.

Then they came for the boy and he didn't dare resist, watching forlornly as they dragged away his only companion. Stepping over the crumpled mass of the old man, he noticed a gleam of silver protruding from his neck, the ground stained with his blood. He quickly averted his eyes and instead attempted to take in his surroundings but all he could make out was a large structure that seemed to span nearly as wide as the castle. Atop the walls were more crimson colored flags snapping in the wind. His view was quickly cut short as he was enveloped by the shadows of the darkened tunnel, eating him whole. Torches hanging from the walls provided scant illumination. He was led for was seemed like ages down serpentine steps and twisting corridors that didn't go anywhere but down. The boy was certain that by the time they reached the bottom they must be at the earth's core, yet the air was thick with mildew and too wet to be near lava. It reeked of dung and moldy bread.

Moaning whispers mingled in an echoing keen, firelight flickered more dimly, and the boy's hands grew clammy with anxiety until they were upon a block of cells. Bars on either side and within them were children just like himself. Dirty and scrawny they were. He could hardly make out their frail bodies through the darkness. They took him down to the end of the row where they threw him in the last remaining cell with an unforgiving shove. He hit the ground hard and the cell door jangled shut behind him.

A silent groan was his indication that he wasn't alone and the boy scrambled back until he hit the wall. The figure rose and he caught a glimpse of gold in the dull glow of a nearby torch.

"It's you," he spoke for the first time since the village, his voice croaky with disuse. The wolf let out another noise that sounded like an injured boar as he moved himself to a bed of straw in the corner. A soft dripping noise sounded next to him and he reached out a hand, cupping the water and splashed it onto his face.

"Why did you kill that man?" the boy asked, trying again.

Silence save for the mumblings in the distance and the soft patters of water droplets.

"He was going to gut you," came his simple answer. "I saw before we arrived, what he did to the last boys in the cages. Sick game of his. They let him do it too, couldn't care less."

The boy shivered allowing the air to grow stale with stillness once more, his words lingering in the forefront of his mind. The wolf protected him, _again._

"I— thanks, for…" he trailed off, realizing how inadequate the words sounded on his lips. He thought he heard him utter a hum in response before sounds of rustling hay drowned everything else out, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

He wished his mother were there. To hold him and sing him to sleep. To kiss his forehead and touch his cheek. He missed her. The twinkle of her voice and her long red hair— something that he didn't used to associate with bad omens. He even thought further back, to a time when they were four instead of two. It was becoming so difficult to remember…

"Do you have a name?" the wolf's voice suddenly broke the silence and he nearly jumped at the disruption. He blinked. His name. He remembered his mother, chasing him through fields of grass, laughing and running, calling out his name. It had been so long.

"Aeron. My name is Aeron."

More rustling, he caught a slight glimpse of his form in the torch light and perhaps even a flash of blue.

"Link."

 _A peculiar name_ , he thought. But it rolled off his tongue easily enough and it seemed to fit him, as if he couldn't believe he hadn't known it until now.

"Where are we, Link?"

Aeron heard him sigh followed by more crunching until he could make out his dark shadow sitting against the dank wall. He felt something cool run down the back of his rag and he touched a hand there only to bring it back with some sticky yellow substance coating his fingers. It glistened in the glow of fire.

"In the dungeons below the colosseum, didn't you see it before we got here?"

He shook his head then realized that Link probably couldn't see. "No, I couldn't."

"You do know where this is, right?"

He gave another jerk of his head but before righting himself to clarify, Link was already speaking again. "You don't know much of anything do you?"

Aeron kept silent to that.

"Hyrule Castletown, formally anyhow. That's where we are. They collect us like cattle from the villages they raze and bring us here. Been going on for just shy a year now."

Castletown? This couldn't be the same Castletown Old Ariah would tell in his stories. That Castletown was a place full of singing birds and friendly women who gave out hot cakes and men who patted you on the back with a smile and said, "be on your way now." A place where the air smelled of baked treats and the warm cookfires in hearths, where stringed music played in alleyways and people clapped along dancing capers.

Here there were only terrible words hurtled like knives and mangy dogs that foamed at the mouth, scary women who threw things at his head and men who said, "I'll be lookin' to see you brained on the end of Gerudo skewer come your time." It smelled of sour crop and sour stool, piss and animal waste. The only music that played were the screeches of cats and the moaning of sick. Nobody clapped and nobody danced.

"Why?" he asked. "Why do they bring us here?"

Link didn't answer right away and Aeron was scared that he said something wrong. He didn't want the wolf-boy to mislike him, he was all he had anymore.

But then words trickled from his mouth, unbidden and quiet, "To fight. For their entertainment. They'll train us, run us into the mud for years until they see us fit. Then they fight us like dogs."

Aeron grew very still even though his heart beat as fast as it did back at the village. He wound his arms around his stomach, something he always did when he was frightened. Back then his mother was there. Now she wasn't.

"But not me," Link's voice echoed louder, stronger, "They'll never have me, not truly. Never you either if I can help it. I'll find us a way out, just you see."

"And your friends?" he asked in a meek voice, not daring to hope in Link's words.

"They're not my friends," he answered deridingly. "Bunch of dyer's boys they are, cocky. Wouldn't take my help if I could."

Aeron wiped more of the yellow bile from his hair and thought about the younger brother with the golden eyes. "We could try."

Even through the darkness he could make out his measured look, as if he were reassessing him. "We could."

They stayed that way for some time, listening to the echoes of wet drips and groans from nearby cells. Every once in a while the torchlight would sputter with a crackle of embers, raining down to the ground with red droplets. He idly watched a shiny cockroach shimmy down the length of a steel bar and scurry along the grooves of masonry right out of their cubicle. He wished he could turn into a cockroach, then he could scurry on out of here and away from this nightmare ridden Castletown and back to his mother. Link shifted again and he could tell that he was done talking for the time so Aeron situated himself against the wall more comfortably, not wanting to put his face on the vermin coated floor. He closed his eyes, beckoning sleep that seemed too far away to reach. He was surprised when he heard Link speak again.

"What were you going on about? Back in town. You mentioned something of a hero and a princess."

Aeron opened his eyes. Had he been saying it aloud? It was all such a blur, he had been so scared…

"A story… my mother used to tell me," he responded quietly.

He saw the shadow of Link's head give a solemn nod then, "Do you believe it?"

The question took him by surprise but the answer came quickly to him. After all, hadn't he asked his mother the same thing?

"I do," he intoned fecklessly, "do you?"

"No," his reply came quick as a whip, searing the air. "I never believed in such cribtales. This world is hard and cruel, no hero or princess can change that. Neither exist anyhow. Even the fabled goddesses play us false. If there are such divine beings then why haven't they stepped in? Why do mothers and fathers burn? Why do brothers and sisters drown?" He paused, hanging a wrist over his knee, his face still marred by shadows. "I have come to learn that the only person who will save you is yourself."

Aeron thought about his mother and how nobody saved her. He thought about his father and the sister he couldn't remember. Nobody saved them. He thought of himself and the way Gerudo men seized him as if he were no more than a pestering cucoo.

But someone had saved _him_.

Long after silence claimed Link and the dungeon's whispers grew quiet, he pulled out the golden ring that twinkled in the dull light and held it by his thumb and forefinger. Its beauty only made the dirt under his nails seem dirtier. The grim on the floors grimier. The one thing he had of his mother and he didn't even know its purpose. Why would she give him something so precious? As if he'd be able to hide it from them any longer than she. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. He'd never even seen her wear such a beautiful thing before. He wished he had.

When sleep finally took him he dreamed of a wolf, shining gold in the moonlight. He ran and ran through leaves and trees and grass, faster than a racing garron. Voices spoke to him, melodic whisperings in his ears, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Then there was a sword. A mythical looking thing right there in the deep fastness of wilderness with vines and bignonia climbing in twain around the glowing blade and its violet hilt. It radiated brilliantly in the darkness until it blinded the entire sanctum in an ethereal white light. When it subsided the wolf had disappeared, in its place was a human boy grown old.

And his eyes were as blue as steel.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** _I'm rolling in about a week late, but I still made it within the month of December and that's all that counts right? If not, I hope that the quality and length of this update more than makes up for it. I thought that the previous chapter was a doozey to write, oh man, was I wrong. If you look close enough you can see all my blood, sweat, and tears that I shed mingled in with these paragraphs (amongst some easter eggs, I have way too much fun sneaking those in). I'm going to go sleep for a very long time now._

* * *

Chapter Three

 _Ten Years Later_

A great roar of cheer and applause echoed through the narrow tunnel like the hungry braying of boars, reverberating with howls that bit at his ears. The display was not new to him but its intensity was a queerness unheard of until now. He sat, waiting on a rotting plank of wood as he secured the last of his greaves. Curled strands of long flaxen hair that always seemed to look more brown than gold due to the dirt that encrusted them hung low around his face like a curtain as he worked. He refused any sort of headgear.

"I've seen you take larger."

His mouth pulled at the corners but he quickly fought the urge, stifling it into a slight frown.

"I didn't ask for your counsel," he said not unkindly through the wall of his hair, still stooped over the fastenings of his armor.

"Dumber than a stump, men with arms like that. You're fast and plenty smart, he won't touch a hair on your head if you—"

" _Aeron._ " He fastened the last of his ties and pulled back, tucking the curtain behind his pointed ear and gave the man beside him a long measuring look before his prior efforts gave way to a grin. One glance at his face was enough to do anyone in. "You look of right hell, yet you sit here rambling to allay my fears… or your own?"

Aeron instinctively brought a hand to his forehead where blood still black with thickness ran down the side of his temple. A motely of colors surround his left eye, his bottom lip was cracked in an orange that matched his eyes— the wound burnt and blistered from the sun. His dark chocolate curls that normally had many a maiden swooning were drawn back in a blunt tail at the nape of his neck, thick with sweat. He pulled back to look at his red painted hand and smiled sheepishly. "He really left me in a bad way, huh?"

"You're fortunate to be alive," he responded with a bite. "And it would do you good to head back to the barracks to get that looked after, not sitting here wringing your hands over me like some nursemaid."

"Don't even think about trying to suck my teat."

He gave Aeron a withering look. "That's the song of my death out there and those are your parting words for me?"

His variegated eye softened in the corner. "Don't say that," he intoned with a sudden somberness.

"Then don't you look at me that way, like some kicked dog. Just as you said, I've taken larger," he assured with a wink as he stood to gather his siccas and parma shield, but even his own ears picked up on how hollow his words sounded.

He could feel Aeron's eyes on him as he gathered his equipment, strapping on leather manicas around his arms and adjusting his grips on the hilts. Another eruption of jeering sounded from the barred entrance, the only source of light in the dank tunnel, and the only way he'd be able return to it. An orchestra of fanfare and trumpets echoed loudly, harmonizing with the whinnying of horses and a squawk that sounded of an ostrich.

"It's time," he said with sober finality as he rocked his scimitar in a practice swing. He headed for the entrance where the light blinded his eyes and the cacophony deafened his ears.

"Link."

He stopped, not wanting to look back at the face of his comrade. He already knew its like.

"I've got three red bet on your sorry arse, don't you make me a mummer's stooge."

Link grinned a smile that touched his eyes. "I'm wounded it wasn't four."

He started walking again and the gate rose, presenting his entrance. Bright sunlight filtered his view and he squinted through the settling sand. An arena no larger than a moderate sheep pin, bordered by towering stone walls that reached five times his size fenced him in. Sitting on top, protected from the scorching sun by an overhang were the hundreds of cheering onlookers, surrounding him from all sides like he were a fish in a glass bowl. A great wave of them crashed and swelled at his appearance as if they were trying to get a taste of him. Discord and applause sang in tandem; Link couldn't decide if they wanted his head on his shoulders or laying in the waste of sand at his feet. He pretended they didn't exist.

The arena was small. Smaller than what the colosseum would hold. This was what they called "the evaluation ring", a dollhouse sized version of the Castle Town stadium. Erected beyond the eastern gates and on the expanse of a rolling plateau situated in the base of the Lanayru Mountains, it stood as tall as the lowest tower of Hyrule Castle, yet was still half the size of its model. Its sole purpose being to showcase the hand selection of the new season's fighters.

As if the tourneys weren't enough, they had to make a spectacle of the choosing process as well.

Link stepped a brown-toed boot into the sand, feeling the granules slip and crunch under his weight as the last bejeweled stallion was led out of the ring, magenta feathers in tow. The gaudiness of it all made his stomach turn in disgust.

Trumpets continued to hoot their bellows and Link shielded his eyes from the overbearing sunlight, instead latching them onto a particular patch of scarlet colored sand. Trampled and conglomerated as it was, Link knew it had been Aeron's handiwork. For that, he was grateful.

A deep groan stole his attention and he watched a large gate, as scaly and oxidized as its twin, rise and shake until it disappeared into the stone above. All that remained were the spiked butts of steel that seemed to shine hotter with red than the rest of it. Voices fell to a hasty cadence of hushed murmurs, breathing and waiting with renewed eagerness now that Link's appearance lost its novelty. Unlike him, he knew that his opponent was well received by the foaming onlookers. _A fan favorite_ , he thought bitterly but not because he envied him.

The shadows parted slowly with a bubble that grew as a figure emerged from the tunnel and passed under the jagged threshold. Cheering climbed to a deafening decibel. Link gritted his teeth together with a grinding _click_ and adjusted the hold on his double blades, squeezing until a knuckle popped as he sized up his adversary.

Thick of neck and arms with muscles that bulked the size of small boulders, he stood nearly twice as tall as Link, towering like the stadium itself. Bright flames that echoed the color of blood and nearly matched his eyes sprouted from his scalp, proof of his pure lineage. His skin, dark, taut, and then some all thanks to the constant heat of battle, he bore their evidence all over yet none of them grew grotesque— only silvered in the sunlight as if reflecting their maker. Scars of victories, not losses, Link noted. He wielded a great battle axe made up of an indestructible martensitic steel that had been foraged just for him. It was renowned for its body count and the buildup of skin on the ever-sharp blade was like a trophy from each victim, or so the tales told. He had it slung casually across the broad of his shoulder, the back of his head resting on its cheek. From the moment the shadows scattered from his face, his flaming eyes never left his own. Link did not shy away, refusing to as much as a blink.

They called him Barden the Berserker.

The stadium echoed with his name on their lips, chanting a well-rehearsed song. Link had heard stories of his unstoppable thirst for death from the moment he was thrown into his first practice as a boy. A Gerudo adolescent who willingly joined the rank as a glorified slave in the east camp, except he was never treated as poorly as such. His name day well ahead of his own, but not quite surpassed boyhood, he was already slaughtering unlucky children pitted against him as sparring opponents. Rumors were spread the moment they were brought out of isolation at ten years young. Stories of his most recent victim, traveled from leagues away, through the whisperings of soldiers, slavers and the like, each rendition twisted into a more grotesque tale. Some said he mashed in their brains on the end of his wooden sword, mercilessly plowing until it was human no longer. Others swore he ate their eyes to break his fast and used their bones as utensils.

He was known for his absolute recklessness and insanity, his lack of mercy and his reigning title: the Berserker had yet to lose a battle.

He was the Gerudo's most prized possession. And here he was in all his reputable glory, with only Link standing in his way from becoming a legend.

But Link was far from frightened. He had witnessed much worse.

His lip turned up in a slight snarl, but it wasn't directed towards his mad man of an opponent. He wanted _them_ out there in the arena with him. He wanted to drive his blade through _their_ necks.

Barden took a step forward, heaving the large axe from behind him and superfluously swung it at his side. A sneer of his own was painted on his face but Link doubted it for like-mindedness. The ovation died down at the signal of a rising robed figure in the spectator's box. It was crafted from ornate colonnades and painted in elaborate gold leaf and rose taller than the surrounding stands, a confidant garner of attention.

"Denizens of Hyrule! I bring you the last of the evaluation trials!" The booming voice was met with a chorus of consternation in which the robes raised an unconcealed hand that gleamed with rubies even from Link's point of vantage. Anger began to bubble in his veins.

"Ah, yes, grievous sad news indeed. But do not fret, for this is only the beginning of the excitement yet to come!" Whistles and rooting echoed like the undulating temperament of children. "I have one last request before we part ways for a short time. Look favorably upon these warriors for only one will leave alive, and then my good people, we shall have our _blessed_ victors for the annual Gerudian Tourneys!"

Voices drowned out his thoughts, encompassing his very being. Yet he focused his silted gaze at the grinning man in front of him. Part of him wished that Aeron wasn't watching, that he'd just head back to the healers like any man with half a mind. The other part was thankful that there would be at least one person to account for the truth of it should he perish.

Before the clamor had quieted the Berserker was already advancing forward. Link rolled his shoulder and crouched into a battle stance, tracing the beast's every movement. He carried his axe single handedly, no small feat and one he surely took pride in.

Barden charged with his one-handed strike, aiming for Link's unshielded left side who was more than prepared as he leaned into the right, allowing the blade to narrowly miss his temple. What he was unprepared for was how swiftly he would recover from such a heavy swing. In a savage arc, he brought the axe back around in a dangerous swipe that would have taken Link's head clean off had he not dropped into a rolling crouch. He regained his footing a safe distance away and breathed heavily, bringing the back of his hand to wipe across his hairline only to remove it with a fresh coating of scarlet.

 _How in the bloody hells did he move so fast?_ He wondered in sudden perplexity. It was almost _inhuman_ how quickly he was able to maneuver such an onerous weapon. But his time for pondering was stolen as the Gerudo closed the distance between them and prepared an overhead swing which Link met with his left sicca and stood. Just as he had righted himself, the warrior broke contact and spun around in a flash, jabbing the butt of hilt square into Link's stomach. He was once again caught off guard by his askance speed. Breath escaped him and he gasped as he stumbled over, leaving himself wide open for another spin around and a blow across the side of his face that sent him sprawling towards the ground with blood flying from his mouth. Sand kicked up into his face, his eyes, his throat. He coughed and groaned, desperately fumbling through the fog of pain for his left-handed sword that he dropped.

He heard the distant braying of the audience but it was no more than an echo in his ears over the rushing of his blood and the guttural noises in his throat. He had not been expecting this.

Just as he registered a grunted cry from behind, he turned with the blade in hand and fended off another swing of the axe, this time white-steel gleaming. It sent the Berserker stumbling backwards which allowed him enough time to return to his feet, both scimitars in hand, a reeling head, and blood dripping down his face. He blinked once, breathing deep and attempted to focus on his recovered opponent who looked to be choosing the offensive once again. He thought about the things he knew as he checked another blow and spun, deflecting. He knew that the man was imperceptibly fast and strong to boot. He was also aware of the heavy plated armor he bore across his chest and down past his torso, a gorget at his throat. Link honed in on it.

In between parries he glanced around him, taking in nearby points of interest. It wasn't until Barden brought the massive axe down in another sweep that he deducted a plan. He ducked under the strike and threw his weight into a backflip, neatly landing a few paces away in which his ferocious opponent was already swiftly covering.

He could now see why he was hailed as the Berserker.

He leaned away again from the oncoming swipe and blocked then followed up with another flip.

"Cowardly Hylian scum! You can't run all day!" The man spat in a snarl, his ragged voice like the crashing of rocks. Link ignored him and continued his pattern until he felt comfortable enough with his position in front of a large chased column. This time he grinned as he slammed his blade into the Berserker's own, filling the arena with a melody of steel and quickly danced away. A great crash sounded behind him and he turned to see the not so glistening axe cleaving through rubble and its wielder yelling in aggravation as he righted himself. The crowd collectively gasped. But Link wasn't done yet. He followed up with an up-handed sweep that penetrated through the back plates and the ties that held them together on top of his hauberk. The metal fell into the sand with a muffled _thud_. Link's grin grew wider into a rakish smirk.

"Oh, but it looks as though I can," he finally gave his cavalier reply and swung long clumped strands of hair out his eyes.

Fire burned in the Berserker's eyes, hotter than he'd seen it before and he rounded with about as much ferocity as Link expected. He neatly parried, growing accustomed to his rapid yet exposed swinging style, and went in for an up-handed slash that pierced in between the gorget and the cinch in his shoulder. The thin metal gave way and the blade bit into his skin. The Gerudo cried out in fury.

Link smiled again despite himself as he back flipped out of the way once again like nothing more than an incessant swat fly. Initially, the man had proved to be bit troublesome and even admittedly inspired some dread. Yet just like all his significant opponents, he was able to gain the upper hand through simple trial and error tactics. Every warrior had their weakness. He would know, after all, _he_ was undefeated too.

Barden drove forward off of his heel and charged in a bull rush accompanied with a fitting roar, axe ready to cleave. Link stood his ground watching his movements and predicting the arc in which he would swing. Confident in zeroing in on his underhanded grip, he prepared for an overhead slice but for the third time he managed to surprise Link with a reversal of his wrist. Instead he swept low and the blonde warrior raised his parma shield where the blade caught the lip with a teeth-rattling tremor and outright split the metal in two. Link's eyes widened in momentary shock and used his right blade in defense, sparing his arm from being hacked off. He pushed away and crouched low in a backhanded spin, managing to hamstring his Gerudo opponent and send him buckling to the ground.

Link seized the chance, desperate to end the battle, he threw his right sicca to the side and went in for a downward strike that was supposed to end it all. But his blade was only met with sand. In his rashness, he was delayed by a half second in which Barden scrambled to his feet and turned with a deadly arc that smashed the sword from his grasp.

He went down hard. More sand, this time in his nose, his ears. He quickly rolled and spit, grabbing for the dagger strapped to his leg and met the Berserker hand to hand in which he knocked the heavy axe out of his grip and it went spinning through the air until it landed a yard away, point down in the golden gravel. He wasted no time in a rebuttal of his own— a direct gauntleted fist to the face that sent Link sprawling back to the ground with a sickening crunch. More blood. More red. It almost hurt worse than being brained with steel. He gasped and gagged as he pressed through the throes until he felt a metal hand at his throat pushing him deeper into the sand.

He clawed fruitlessly with strangled cries as he attempted to push the enraged man off of him. A man who had begun to laugh with a maniacal chortle as he watched the breath sputter from his mouth. But it wasn't good enough for the Berserker, apparently he wanted to see Link bleed. Another blow to the face sent his head snapping backwards and his vision momentarily faded out. The crowd, he noticed, was a wild jungle of cawing animals, egging on the insane beast who was throttling the life from his body. But when he opened his eyes again, it wasn't them that he was seeing.

It was something else entirely.

Long gone were the hot dunes of sand that mingled with the stickiness of his blood, the scorching rays of sunlight that threatened to burn him alive, or the crazed stare that was worthy of someone christened The Berserker.

Instead he was running. The wind cool and caressing on his face as it graciously parted for his deft ascent. The breeze whispered in his ears sweet nothings of freedom and absolute weightlessness. He felt smaller than what he was used to like a lissome cat flying through a dense green of a forest, nimbler than what his build would allow. He catapulted from limb to limb and back down again to the moss covered ground, dodging ensnaring roots and fallen trees alike that threatened to thwart his path at a speed that was faster than his brain could register.

He felt a sudden prickle of fear wash over him like an icy hand on his neck. A beat later, a hiss that slid by his left ear was in evidence for its cause.

It had been the whizz of an arrow that marginally missed the side of his head.

It was as if his body had anticipated it before he even understood what was happening, just as his legs expertly kicked off the trunk of a tall tree and abruptly changed course in response. _I'm being pursued, but from where?_ Granted, he was moving at an indiscernible speed that only allowed him to make out the blurs of passing greenery and hazy mottled sunlight.

More arrows sighed through the air, one of them catching onto a solid branch just overhead with a cringe-worthy _thwack._ He managed to lithely avoid each one with a roll and a spring that sent him soaring down a steep cliff side hidden beneath undergrowth and thickets of tangled brambles. With astounding grace, he leapt from jutted rocks and roots, careful to avoid the slippery dead leaves of the forest floor. The arrows grew scarce and with a wave of relief he realized that he had finally gained a significant advantage ahead. Maneuvering deftly on his toe, he spun on a stone that gave away on under his weight and reached out for long vine. Taking no more than a half second to test its hold he gripped it with the other hand and allowed it to carry his momentum across the rolling cliff. He soared through the air towards an awaiting limb of a gnarled tree.

And then he was suffocating. The air had been completely expelled from his lungs and he was coughing, wheezing, choking. Then he was falling. His stomach suddenly in his throat and no oxygen to cling to, his eyes watered and he opened his mouth to yell but nothing came out. He slammed into a bed of nettles and branches that stabbed him in the neck and face and before he could grasp his surroundings he was sliding on a blanket of wet leaves. Burs and vines bit and scraped him leaving trails of blood on his arms and face. He closed his eyes as if it would ward them off but he still felt their claws raking him open and a ragged scream tore from his throat. His left hand burned, oh it _burned_.

When he opened them again he was on his palms and knees, sunken into hot sand that clung to his hair and dripped off as he panted, spitting and gagging. There was red spatter on his hand and along the edge of the rondel dagger he held in his fist that he didn't recall grabbing. The burning sensation on the back of his hand had subsided a small amount but he was still tempted to tear off the gloves he wore. However, the world was turning upside down and he wasn't certain which way was up. He blinked through the dirt in his vision and attempted clear the blur that had taken up residence where movement caught his eye.

A stone's throw away was Barden charging like a buck ready to ram.

Link wasn't quick enough and had only made it to weary feet before metallic knuckles kissed his cheek. He heard the nauseating crack of his nose and was reeling back towards the ground; but before he could feel the impact, a hand grabbed him by his sore neck. Link instinctively brandished the dagger but his wrist too was snatched and he fought against the force that was turning the blade onto himself. Barden had him locked and stunted.

The beast was stronger than Link and he felt his arm giving way as the dagger crept closer to his ill-armored stomach. In a final desperate attempt, he brought his foot down and slammed it into the back of the wight's leg, targeting the wound he had inflicted earlier. He collapsed and went down to one knee with a bellow. Link took advantage of the newfound vulnerability and jerked his arm from its shackled grip and transfixed the dagger through Barden's niche in his gorget that he exposed earlier. He buried the blade up to the hilt in his neck and watched as blood spurted like a fountain as he pierced the artery. The man's eyes glazed over and the fire extinguished.

Link looked up through his brow, furrowed with sweat and glared at the seated figure of robes as he yanked the weapon out of the body, pushing it away from him in disgust.

Barden the Berserker fell face first into a slush of wet sand concocted purely of his blood with a wet thud.

The crowd became crazed. A chorus of derision erupted all around him and yet he stared at the hooded man who remained as still as the Gerudo sentinels beside him. With a spit of crimson-stained saliva, he tossed the rondel off to the side and cavalierly strode back to the awaiting gate, leaving the discord, the blood, and the rubies behind him.

When he returned to the haven of shadows he was all but waylaid. Through the blindness of his adjusting eyes, he couldn't make out a thing to save his life.

"You barmy fool! You were a done man— a done man!"

He felt a hand pound him on the back and nearly crumpled under its pressure.

"Merciful Nayru, you were— he had you— I thought for sure—"

"Well done, Link!" Another clap, this time on his wounded shoulder causing him to let out a grimacing moan as he fell into the wall.

"Harebrained dullard! Look what you did!

"Only because you assaulted him!"

Link groaned again and slid down the length of the stone until he sat on the ground. He brought a hand to his face in an effort to stop the tunnel from spinning.

"Assault? I did not assault him!"

"He just finished putting _the Berserker_ to the sword, and you punch him in the back?"

He tried to redirect his focus on tuning them out but their bickering ascertained that he wouldn't be receiving his peace any time soon. Just as Aeron began to sling a string of curses, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and he opened his eyes. They had adjusted enough to the darkness so that he could make out a pair of sienna eyes. The shock of light-colored hair quickly filtered in as well, a characteristic of his they all found odd. It ran down the length of his back, silky and long, he usually kept it tied in a low plait. As a child it had been as black as his brother's, but with age streaks of white had begun to paint themselves through. Greying at seventeen years young, a couple years beneath the rest of them, they all teased him mercilessly for it.

He exhaled. "Hey, Iden."

"Link." He felt the younger man put his hand under his arm, helping him to his feet. "I think my brother and your sweetheart are just seconds away from either destroying each other piecemeal or wind sucking one another. I haven't decided."

Link let out a breathless chuckle that sounded more like a wheeze. "Probably… the latter," he gave a strained answer as something popped in his back while Iden put Link's arm around his shoulders.

"How are you fairing?"

"Actually I was planning on bringing down the whole damn Gerudo cavalry before sup," he cracked cheekily. "Do you think they'll save me some wine?"

"Something tells me they won't be giving you wine for quite some time, Gerudo cavalry or no," Iden answered, adjusting Link's weight with a jerk that bobbed his head.

"On second thought, that's alright because I think I'm going to be ill."

"Do aim away from me, if you don't mind."

Link allowed him to take the brunt of his weight as he shouldered him through the dank hallway. Iden may be younger than the rest of them but he could hold his own and was nearly Link's height.

"Could you quit your incessant drivel for one moment? If you aren't going to help then move your magpie squabbling arses out of the way!"

Link cracked a slight smirk behind the curtain of his bloody hair. He didn't have the energy to look but he could envision the expressions on his comrades' faces as the air suddenly went still. Out of the lot of them, Iden by far had the most patience. When he lost it, that's when they all knew it was more serious than hogwash tidings. He was the brains of their group and seldom gave in to their boyish antics that Aeron was so fond of displaying. Even Link had to admit he couldn't quite keep still of his tongue when his friend was goading him on, that is, when he _wasn't_ bleeding out on someone's shoulder. "Teach" was the name that Eldwin had dubbed his little brother and when he was less than thrilled with his company it was an array of colorful profanities that only Aeron could have taught him.

"Nayru, bless it," he heard said man swear before he felt his other arm being slung around a second set of shoulders. "Why'd you have to go and get yourself half-dead, huh? I almost lost all my rupees because of your recklessness!"

Link didn't bother to remind him that he was lucky to even be alive or that Aeron wouldn't have lasted longer than a lame cucco out there. With a grin that he failed to muster he knew that his friend was only hiding his concern behind a wall of insults and wise japes, something he was well versed in. His head lolled to the side as they started forward without the movement of his legs, they felt like they were made of heavy steel. His mind grew foggy and the knowledge of walking was lost on him. His comrade's voices echoed in and out of clarity as everything quickly became muffled.

"Link?"

"…doesn't look well…"

"— act quickly."

The burning sensation had returned in his hand, he realized with an irritation that faded as quickly as the sounds around him. But then it increased in a sudden awareness that seemed to jolt his entire body. He felt his back arch in response and something that could have been a scream tear from his lips.

Flashes of green swam through the seeping darkness that he had been welcoming like a balm to his wounds, disrupting and convoluting the bliss. With each vision the burn intensified and he could hear himself protesting in agony as they frequented until he found himself back on the soft dirt-covered ground of a forest. He held the burning hand to his head and noticed as long strands of hair hung low around him. He took note of the way the sunlight refracted off of them, shining with a golden strawberry hue. He carefully removed the hand from his face as he stared. _That's not my hair… and this certainly isn't my hand._

Turning it over in closer inspection, he examined the long slender fingers and the bony knuckles on a hand much too small to be his own. The skin was pale and smooth like buttercream but it was adorned with callouses and dried cuts that spoke of violence. Black fabric was pull taut over the back and wrapped around the middle finger, concealing the burn he felt.

A whirring noise he was all too familiar with pulled him from his trance and his head snapped up to find an arrow shaft sticking out of the wet soil next to him. Before he could even think to move, the effeminate body was carrying him through a midden heap of leaves and twigs. He was moving significantly slower than before and he noticed a throbbing in his ankle that seemed to be its cause. Birds sounded all around him, squawking and taking flight from the disturbance he was creating. Ahead was a large chasm that would have made Link stop dead in his tracks if he had been in control of his movements. Instead the sight seemed to invigorate him, spurring him to move his legs more rapidly despite their protests. Using a large stone for momentum, he kicked off and soared high into the air. Just as quickly as it began, gravity made its presence known and spurred the ending. He would have screamed but it stayed lodged in his throat, unheard and unspoken like a bad dream.

Something had materialized in his hand while he had been preoccupied with his ever increasing descent. He pushed in on a switch that shot out a long chain at lightning speed, embedding itself deep into the limb of a tree. Hitting the switch a second time caused the device to recoil with a sharp clang that physically jolted him forward and his arm almost right out of the socket. It reeled him in through the air and across the rest of the gorge as quick as a tektite. The sound of the retracting metal stirred something inside of Link. Something familiar, something nostalgic as if it were from long ago.

He didn't have time to ponder the notion as the toes of his feet slammed into the trunk of the tree. Apparently he had been planning on using the force as momentum but the pain in his leg escalated into a full out tremor that made him grit his teeth in agony. His leg gave way and with it the hook in the bark. He was falling and the shriek that was wrenched from his throat was not his own but that of a female.

Link hit the ground with the flat of his back and an impact that rattled his brain like electricity. His tail bone and the back of his head flared with an angry resistance that prevented him from doing much more than rolling over and unstably pulling himself to his feet. Just as he had reached out an arm to steady himself, a sudden piercing burn that was tripled in intensity compared to his hand shot through the back of his calf. He was sent to the ground with a startled cry and even through the pain was struck with another twinge of familiarity at the sound of the woman's strangled voice. Warily, he used an elbow to prop himself up and turn his head around. An arrow fletching was sticking out of his fibula.

"My, my. The _gall_ of you."

Black leather boots fastened with a bronze buckle stepped into view. Link glowered up through his lashes, seething. Towering over him with one hand complacently perched on her hip and the other holding a deadly-looking recurve bow over her shoulder, was a dark-skinned woman with a high-tied crimson pony tail on the crown of her head and a smirk painted on her face.

"How does that saying go again? 'Honor amongst thieves'?" The woman crouched down on her haunches and dipped her head so close that Link could make out the way her lips cracked and the black coal painted on her eyelids. She reached out a slender hand, her nails long and sharp, and used them to tip his chin so that he could see the ire burning behind her eyes.

"You traitorous wench. I knew you were no good from the moment you arrived at our camp, doe-eyed and innocent. I saw through you when they did not." Link watched with mounting dread as her cat-like eyes narrowed and the corners of her mouth curdled like bad milk. She abruptly stood.

" _I see no honor here!_ " the woman roared and smashed his arm out from underneath him with a kick of her boot. His chin hit the ground and jammed his teeth together, his tongue caught in the middle. He felt the familiar taste of metal filling his mouth as she continued to speak. "I have half a mind to gut you like the animal you are right here, but Sister won't be pleased with that. After all, it is she you will have to explain your crimes to and knowing her tolerance for treason, she will probably feed you your own entrails herself."

The woman cocked her head to the side deridingly, her eyelids lowered and the black designs she had them painted in became more evident like wisps of smoke from her burning gaze. "Do you have nothing to say of yourself?"

Link wanted to open his mouth, to tell her she had the wrong person, that by Farore, he had no idea what she was talking about but his body had other ideas. His lip twitched in a sneer as he stared into her amber eyes and spit on the toe of the woman's boot instead.

"Wrong answer."

Pain erupted from the side of his head and then all faded to darkness.

* * *

Images of objects, places, and people that he had never seen before taunted him, spoke to him. They weaved in and out of his consciousness. A blue instrument, a feral wolf, open fields and luminescent forests, a chestnut destrier with a wild white mane, a sword, a harp, a beautiful woman with long golden hair…

The first time Link tried to open his eyes he was met with a heavy resistance as if an invisible weight had settled on his eyelids. It physically burned the core of his eyeballs to pry them open. He only managed to catch a glimpse of dancing orange light on a wall cast by a flickering flame. He was almost certain he made out a black shadow in the corner of the room, hooded and concealed in the darkness. Link didn't have the strength for coherent thought as he drifted back under the veil of unconsciousness and it too faded with the firelight.

The second time he was able to open his eyes he stared ahead at a cobweb painted ceiling and watched as a small skulltulla crawled its way through the chasings of dry mortal, looking for a place to make its dank dwelling. Smells of coal and medicinal herbs made him wrinkle his nose.

A shock of white fuzz interrupted the spider's journey with an abruptly tragic end and a resounding _smack_ that echoed around the otherwise quiet room. If Link hadn't been awake before, he was now. He watched as the fuzz drew closer in clarity then quickly disappeared from his line of sight.

"Blasted vermin, come to steal my trade, eh? See how you enjoy my potions now! Sniveling little…" an old voice that whistled on the letter _s_ and sounded as dry as the desert itself mumbled until Link could no longer make out the nonsense. The man paced around to the opposite side of the room where he deposited an object on a low shelf just above a crackling hearth. "Wart of toad, octorock tentacle, condensed chu jelly…" He heard the jingle of chains and the drag of heavy robes.

It ended up being a cough that gave him away, much to his chagrin. The clinking grew louder until a parched and whiskered face hovered over him, drowning out everything else. Link cursed the tickle in his throat.

"You're awake," the man said. "So tell me, was she pretty? It's been riding at me for days."

Link blinked stagnantly. "Pardon?" It was followed by another cough. His throat felt drier than the old man's voice who gave a chortling laugh that sounded like the cackle of a weasel.

"I should hope that she was a mite prettier than a common whore by the way you been screamin' her name."

Link closed his eyes, wishing that he had never opened them to begin with. "I don't…"

He felt the presence leave him so he cracked a lid, testing the waters. The man's long white beard looked brittle enough to flake right off in a gust of wind. Link watched as it fluttered against his chest with the flippant waving of his sleeved hand. The familiarity of his face suddenly hit him. Wendrel. Or Wonky Wendrel as Aeron so tactfully favored. One of the camp's apothecaries; Link never had the pleasure of being treated by him himself but Aeron swore on all three goddesses that he was some lord's fool in disguise. He claimed a potion he once gave him to break a fever nearly did him in, meanwhile, the man prattled on about undead hands that popped out of lavatories. Then again, half the gibberish that came out of Aeron's mouth was farcified anyhow.

"Was it Eda? Griselda something or other?" Wendrel tisked as Link stared nonplussed. "Whatever it was, you were keeping up half the medicine wing with yer moaning. At least _someone_ was having a good time," he cackled, picking up a mortaring bowl and filling it with what seemed to be some kind of herb mixture. Link's ears suddenly burned and he glanced away towards the glowing fire. He didn't exactly recall what he'd been dreaming about or if he'd been dreaming at all, but something told him it couldn't have been further from what the healer was implying.

An itchy tingle burned his nostrils, causing him to give in to a sudden sneeze. He hadn't noticed the elder man until he was hovering over his beside, a steaming clay vessel in his hands.

"Drink. It will aid the wounds," Wendrel said. Link took the ewer and stared at the foul smelling substance, praying that Aeron was as much as a fool as he thought. One gulp had him instantaneously fighting the urge to retch.

"The talk is that," the apothecary began as he drug his robes back to his table at the hearth, "I might been have better off leaving you where I found you. Yer life fetches for a fair rupee these days, or so I've heard."

Link stared down into his cup, a heavy pit forming in his stomach.

 _Sweet Farore, Aeron was right. I'm as good as dead._

He heard a throaty chuckle echo over the popping of flames. "Alas, that would not be my job. I serve all who are in need, even the coveted," Wendrel flashed him a wink. "Go on, I didn't tell you to stop drinking." He didn't resume until he watched Link take a hesitant sip. "I'd watch yerself from here on, boy. You really managed to anger a quite many of them. I have half a mind to assume I'll be seeing you again, just like those pesky skulltulas, never let me alone."

Link tried to take the old man's words as nonsensical tidings, but as his bedridden days progressed so did the weight of his warnings. Old Wendrel never returned after that first day, only simple-minded squires and fledgling healers changed his bandages and fed him meal. When he was released, Link was ill-prepared for the commotion that awaited him. As guards escorted him back to his cell, hands fettered behind his back, a fellow Hylian warrior gave a loud "whoop" from behind his bars. Another let out a shrill whistle. A third chanted his name. What started as a slow clap turned into a deafening roar of applause from the blocks of cells on either side of him as if he were their savior returned to them. Despite himself, Link cracked a smile as he watched hands reach through iron cages and men bang their tin supping utensils along metal rods. "Link, Link, Link," was chorused like a verse to a song. The two guards that flanked him served to be of even higher amusement as they tried in vain to stifle the ruckus but to little avail. They could only stab so many arms with their lances.

When they came upon the last cell in the block, a familiar face lit up at the sight of him. It wasn't until he was unceremoniously forced inside with a shove from the butt of a stave that he heard his friend speak.

"And the prodigal son returns to the land of the living!"

Aeron leapt down from his raised cot, which was just as filthy as ever, Link noted. He had been spoiled with his time in the healing ward.

"Lepal swears on his tunic that he saw you in Wonky's quarters, and you know how he loves that thing. First the Berserker and then that doddering cucco's potions, what's your secret? Sell your soul? Find a hexing mask? What's the name of that one again, you know, in those cribtales that Eldwin would tell us…"

"Majora," a voice echoed above. Link craned his head to get a better view of the bunks that shouldered against the other side of their bars in an adjoined cell. Eldwin look down from the top, his black hair fringing in his eyes.

Aeron snapped his fingers. "That one! Nayru, Link, you're a bloody hero around here now. Did you see all that fuss? All for you, for _you_!"

"I've got to admit, haven't seen anything like it since Flounderwell filched those venison pies from the commander's chambers," Eldwin spoke as he picked dirt from under his nails, resting on his back.

"So I've heard," Link interrupted as Aeron had opened his mouth to continue his excited rambling. He sighed noisily and made his way past him and over to his bunk, running a tired hand through his hair.

Aeron followed, sitting down next to him. "Well don't sound too cheer about it."

He gave his friend a weary look. "I won that battle with a double edged blade."

Aeron frowned, "I didn't blink once, I'm fairly certain it was a dagger that you did him in with—"

"Metaphorically, you fool,"

Link slapped the back of his head, in which he responded with a dramatic, "Alright, alright! Perhaps next time without the violence, huh?" and rubbed the point of impact. Link rolled his eyes.

"Wonk— Wendrel told me, the day I woke up. Aeron, I bested Barden the Berserker. I killed him and made a frank show of it," he uttered gruffly as he looked down at the soiled floor.

"It was quite the display," came Eldwin's monotone chime in from above. He continued on, ignoring him.

"He was one of the Gerudo's most valued pawns, at least in the eastern camp. I looked at him as I did it too," Link shifted his gaze to the flame that danced in a torch outside of their jail, "the king. I looked at him with the foulest expression I could muster and then I kicked that lifeless collateral of theirs right into his own blood. I wasn't thinking, I was just… just so _angry._ At them, at all of this. Sure, I'm some kind of graven image of hope now for all of you, but what am I to them? I'm their biggest threat."

Link glanced back at Aeron, expecting to meet his eyes but they were downcast. He soberly fidgeted with something hanging from his neck. Link stared as he remained silent and watched as he brought the object out from underneath his shirt, instantly recognizing it as the golden ring he'd had since they were kids. He never talked about it so Link never asked. He'd never once seen him without it.

"Aeron?"

His friend finally let the band drop against his chest and he hesitantly shifted his gaze back to Link. An uncharacteristically acrimonious demeanor had cast over him like a sudden fog on a sunny day.

"I know."

"You know? Then why were you so—"

Aeron blinked, something hot flashing behind his eyes. "I wanted just a moment. One moment before I told you. It's no secret that what you did ignited something fierce amongst the rest of the warriors. They see you as their savior. But the Gerudo— Eldwin and I overheard a pair of guard talking in the kitchens during sup—" He cut himself off looking up towards the bunk but all that could be seen was an unmoving shadow. Realizing he wouldn't be receiving any help, he continued with a labored sigh.

"Link, you're to fight the first battle in the Gerudian Tourneys. Against three Red Men. Alone."

Link stared unseeing. His world suddenly flipped upside down. For a moment he even wished he was having another vision, but everything stayed right where it was. No forests. No arrows. Nothing but Aeron and their dank cell and the absolute cold truth of it all.

Red Men. That's what they called the Hylians who had been captured in the war but were too sinewy of limb and weak of courage; too ill-suited for the blood-bath entertainment. They were the frail, the sick, the frightened. Too old to marinate for battle as young children like they had been. They were the ones taken in by the alchemists, the necromancers, the occultists who claimed they were augurers. Those who dabbled in dark magics and used them as test subjects for their experiments and as a result, producing an entirely new race altogether.

Their skin had bubbled and thickened, calloused over like an angry scarlet set of scales. It covered them from head to toe. Their teeth were elongated and sharpened like the fangs of a serpent, their eyes hollow and black with death. The only thing that could be comparable to them was the ReDead. Except the Red Men could move much quicker, much faster, and with deadly precision.

As boys in the western camp, they had only heard stories. Tales that would keep them awake at night, jumping at the sound of each water drip or foot fall. That was until the day they were taken to the great arena in the center of Castletown; they had been adolescent youths who had not quite reached adulthood. It was there that they were forced to watch the unveiling of what was known as the Gerudo's most well-kept research. Experiments gone wrong but so terribly right. They were to be used to spice up the games, to add a bit of flare to a practice they deemed as growing dull. Finally it was time to present the fruit of their efforts.

Link would never forget the sight it had been. The arena had become a red abattoir of blood. The combatants they were pitted against hadn't stood a chance. The Red Men savagely tore through them like bison waiting for a slaughtering. The battle, if it could even be called that, lasted no longer than five minutes.

The display had been so horrific that even the onlookers, who normally screamed for spilled blood, were horrified. Their practices had rightfully been banned and those who partook in the creation were put to the sword. Or so they said.

The one and only time they had ever used the Red Men in a battle, and it had merely taken two of them to slaughter five seasoned warriors and one young man.

"…they said they had been watching you for some time now. You had been raising morale amongst the fighters, the Gerudo fear you, Link…"

Aeron's lips were moving but his words came to him in bits and pieces. He could no longer feel his fingers or his legs, nothing except for the pounding of his heart like the beating of a hollow drum. So hollow. So empty. His hand burned but it felt like a slight tickle through the numbness.

"…we're going to find a way to save you. Me, and Eldwin, and Iden, we're not going to let you end up like Cadus. Iden has been digging his nose into those books of his, I still don't know where he manages to find or hide them for that matter, but he's researching and we're going to find something… anything… Link?"

"It's going to be alright, you have to trust me."

A dimness had settled in around his vision like vignette on an old pictograph. Aeron's voice filtered through him in a constant hum of nothingness as he focused in on a distant shadow in the corner of the block. Hooded and concealed, he knew he had seen it somewhere before. Somewhere between unconsciousness and death. Dreams and reality. Broken promises and scattered hope that made him feel as empty as Aeron's words.

"Link?"

And then it was gone.


End file.
